Short term and long term effects can be very different

[Iguana]

It is very often said on this forum, “experiment and do what works for you”.

This is a total nonsense because how could someone know what will work for himself / herself in the long run? It should be obvious that short term effects can be totally different than long term ones.

Do I really need to give some examples?

Take a person used to drink several cups of coffee per day. What will happen to her when suddenly deprived of coffee?

Take someone who has eaten a standard cooked diet during her whole life and give her a good raw paleo meal with the best wild meat and raw food available. What is likely to happen to her in the next few hours?

Hundreds of examples can be found. Detoxination is something making the issue even more complex.

The only safe way is to do what has been proven to work for others in the long run. 

In « Complexity Reduction in Automotive Design and Development », Ronald J. Ziegler wrote these fine excerpts (which I already quoted several times), perfectly applying to diet as well:

[eveheart]

Your post would be wise and useful IF there were some litmus test for truth, if there were some crystal ball into the future, and if we were all healthy newborn babes. Even when I do my best "living in the here and now," I can't help feeling a twinge of regret that my mother had no sound nutritional wisdom sixty+ years ago. Or perhaps I could have stumbled on the truth twenty-seven years ago, as you have said was the case in your life.

Many of us here need these short-term guideposts - is my blood sugar under control? - how severe is my inflammation? am I thinking straight today? - because our bodies exhibit states of disease.

Then, the experiment becomes the answer to these two questions: 1) Is it possible for me to get well? and 2) What can I try to improve my health.

I was never a healthy person, and I was raised on a patently unhealthy diet. Three years on RPD (with experiments!) has improved my quality of life miraculously! However, they say that "the good is the enemy of the best." I will continue to search for improvement.

[Iguana]

Eve, I don't pretend that short term results should always be considered meaningless. I mean that thing are extremely complex and there are more parameters to consider than short term results only.

For example, someone can feel very well and healthy while consuming a lot of raw milk during years or even decades. With some luck, that person will remain healthy until a very advanced age. But there's a danger anyway and the precautionary principle recommends to totally avoid dairy.

[eveheart]

Eve, I don't pretend that short term results should always be considered meaningless. I mean that thing are extremely complex and there are more parameters to consider than short term results only.

In the documentary The Perfect Human Diet, CJ Hunt summarizes the wisdom of ancestral eating by contrasting man's 100,000s of years of unprocessed food, his 10,000s of years of field agriculture, and his 100 years of modern diet. Then he asks, "Which is the fad diet?"Clearly, instinctive eating of unprocessed foods is the winner.

I think we both agree that there is a difference between an optimal diet and a therapeutic diet. I replied merely to put a fine point on it.

[cherimoya_kid]

The less processed a food is, the more immediate its effects are, generally.